Law360 (March 13, 2025, 1:44 PM EDT) — A California federal judge on Thursday ordered the immediate reinstatement of certain probationary employees fired from six federal agencies, saying the Office of Personnel Management did not have the authority to direct those terminations, making the firings “unlawful.”
Judge William Alsup’s order “finds that all such terminations were directed by defendants [Office of Personnel Management] and acting director [Charles] Ezell and were unlawful because OPM and Ezell had no authority to do so.” It is not immediately known how many workers the judge’s order affects. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) The ruling applies to certain probationary employees fired from the Veterans Administration, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the Department of the Treasury.
In an oral ruling from the bench, U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted a preliminary injunction that expanded a temporary restraining order issued last month to order the six agencies to immediately offer reinstatement to any and all probationary employees terminated on or about Feb. 13-14.
“This order finds that all such terminations were directed by defendants OPM and acting director [Charles] Ezell and were unlawful because OPM and Ezell had no authority to do so,” the judge said.
It is not immediately known how many workers the judge’s order affects. While the unions and advocacy groups said that tens of thousands of workers have been wrongly fired, Judge Alsup’s latest order applies only to the agencies for which he had been presented the most evidence.
“Those are the ones where I believe the record is the strongest,” the judge said.
The judge also blasted the government for saying in a template letter provided to the agencies that the firings were based on the workers’ performance.
“The reason that OPM wanted to put this based on performance is, at least in part, in my judgment, a gimmick to avoid the Reduction In Force Act,” the judge said. “It is a sad, a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that is a lie.”
At the TRO hearing in February, Judge Alsup had also ordered acting OPM director Charles Ezell to appear in person at Thursday’s evidentiary hearing. On Wednesday, the government filed a notice with the court saying that Ezell would not testify and that they were withdrawing a written declaration that Ezell had previously submitted to the court before the February TRO hearing. The government instead swapped in a declaration from an OPM senior adviser, Noah Peters.
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During Thursday’s hearing, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Stacey Leyton of Altshuler Berzon LLP, said that Peters was not being offered for cross-examination and so his declaration should not be considered by the court.
“It was presented by an ex parte motion to stop this hearing today,” Leyton said. “They are not making Mr. Peters available for cross examination, just like all the other government witnesses that we tried to present to the court to find the truth of what happened.”
Judge Alsup said he agreed with the lawyer on that point.
“The government I believe is trying to frustrate the court’s ability to get at the truth of what happened here, with sham declarations,” the judge said. “They withdrew it … that’s not the way it works in U.S. district court.”
A lawyer for the government, Kelsey Helland of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, told the court that it had submitted press releases from the various agencies and other documents showing “that they were the ones who made the decision to terminate probationary employees,” not the OPM.
The workforce reductions follow President Donald Trump’s Feb. 11 Executive Order directing the agencies to shrink the size of the government and “dramatically improve workforce efficiency,” Helland said.
Further evidence of the agency’s independent decision-making, the government lawyer said, is the fact that “virtually all” of the agencies didn’t decide to bring their workers back after the court’s February statements about the OPM’s actions being unlawful.
Judge Alsup’s response was quick and with a raised voice.
“Maybe that’s why we need an injunction to tell them to rehire them,” the judge said. “You are not bringing the people in here to be cross examined. You’re afraid to do so because you know cross examination will reveal the truth.”
Before issuing his order, Judge Alsup made clear that a federal agency can make a reduction in its workforce as long as it follows certain statutory requirements. In this case, however, the administration attempted to do a reduction in force through the Office of Personnel Management and by eliminating probationary employees.
“To have the OPM direct agencies to terminate probationary employees, as an easy way to get a reduction in force underway,” the judge said.
The judge also questioned the government’s contention that the employees must take their bid for reinstatement to the Merit Systems Protection Board or the Federal Labor Relations Authority rather than the court. A Jan. 20 government memorandum says that probationary employees have no appeal rights, he noted before ordering the parties to provide the court with written briefing on the matter.
Thursday’s ruling is the latest development in a fast-moving lawsuit that a coalition of unions, which collectively represent hundreds of thousands of federal employees, filed on Feb. 19 against the OPM and Ezell, alleging the layoffs affected tens of thousands of workers in their first two years of employment at dozens of agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health, the Small Business Administration, the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
The suit alleged the OPM’s conduct constituted an “ultra vires” act that exceeded the scope of OPM’s statutory authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and the suit seeks a declaration the layoff order is unlawful. It also seeks to stop future layoffs connected to the order and a reversal of the layoffs that have already occurred.
Tens of thousands of probationary employees “across dozens of federal agencies have already been terminated in the summary, assembly-line fashion directed by OPM. Each day, more such employees receive notice of the termination of their federal employment,” the plaintiffs say in the latest version of their complaint, filed on March 11. “The terminations have been conducted summarily, without any advance notice to the affected employees, throwing their lives, their families’ lives, and the entire federal government into chaos.”
Further, the workers were told they were being fired for “performance reasons, when they most certainly were not,” the complaint states.
On Feb. 27, Judge Alsup ruled from the bench and issued a temporary restraining order saying that OPM communications that led to firing of the employees were illegal and must be stopped, rejecting assertions from the government that the OPM did not order the firings but instead gave guidance to federal agencies, which then made firing decisions on their own.
At that earlier hearing, Judge Alsup criticized the OPM’s position as unbelievable and noted that Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves, not to the OPM. The judge also emphasized that firing probationary employees without cause not only hurts the mission of those agencies, but also the ability of the government to recruit new workers, and he ordered the OPM to notify workers of his ruling in writing.
Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a plaintiff affiliated with the AFL-CIO, heralded the court’s ruling Thursday.
“We are grateful for these employees and the critical work they do, and AFGE will keep fighting until all federal employees who were unjustly and illegally fired are given their jobs back,” Kelley said.
A spokesperson for the AFL-CIO, said it is not known approximately how many employees are being reinstated through the judge’s preliminary injunction order.
“Unfortunately we have no accurate count of how many probationary employees were fired at each agency because the agencies have not been providing that information,” AFL-CIO Communications Specialist Tim Kauffman told Law360.
A White House press secretary posted a response to the order on the social media site X.
“The president has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch — singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the president’s agenda,” the spokesperson said. “The Trump administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order.”
The advocacy groups include the Coalition To Protect America’s National Parks, Vote Vets Action Fund Inc., the American Public Health Association, and the American Geophysical Union. The State of Washington is also a plaintiff.
The plaintiffs are represented by Scott A. Kronland, Stacey M. Leyton, Eileen B. Goldsmith, Danielle E. Leonard, Robin S. Tholin and James Baltzer of Altshuler Berzon LLP, Rushab Sanghvi of the American Federation of Government Employees, Teague Paterson and Matthew S. Blumin of the American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees, and Norman L. Eisen and of State Democracy Defenders Fund.
The plaintiff state of Washington is represented by Tera M. Heintz, Cristina Sepe and Cynthia Alexander of the Office of the Washington State Attorney General.
OPM and Charles Ezell are represented by James D. Todd Jr. and Yuri S. Fuchs of the U.S. Department of Justice‘s Civil Division and Kelsey J. Helland of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California.
The case is American Federation of Government Employees et al. v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management et al., case number 3:25-cv-01780, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
–Additional reporting by Dorothy Atkins. Editing by Alyssa Miller.